A cyber-criminal who defrauded American telecommunications giant AT&T out of more than $200m through a phone-unlocking bribery scheme has been sentenced to prison. Muhammad Fahd, a 35-year-old citizen of Pakistan and Grenada, led a seven-year conspiracy in which AT&T employees were bribed to unlawfully unlock nearly two million customers’ cell phones for profit. The plot began in 2012 when Fahd colluded with others to recruit AT&T staff working at a call center in Bothell, Washington. The employees…

Agents installed by default on Azure Linux virtual machines are vulnerable to a remote code execution flaw that can be exploited with a single request. Background On September 14, researchers at Wiz disclosed a set of four vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Open Management Infrastructure (OMI), an open source Common Information Model (CIM) management server used for managing Unix and Linux systems. CVE Description CVSSv3 VPR …

Antivirus vendor Bitdefender has launched a free universal decryption tool to help victims of REvil ransomware, also known as Sodinokibi. The new tool, which was made available on Thursday, can restore many files impacted by the crypto-locking malware before July 13, 2021. However, the tool’s instructions include the warning that “some versions” of REvil “are not yet decryptable.” REvil victims can download the tool and a step-by-step tutorial on how to use it via the Bitdefender website. The free decryptor is…

An August Beyond Identity report takes a look at people’s password protection habits as well as their tendencies to guess other folk’s passwords. Image: GettyImages/GaudiLab In recent months, a slew of cyberattacks has hamstrung critical aspects of U.S. infrastructure including domestic meat and petroleum production as network security concerns take center stage amid soaring ransomware payouts. Last month, Beyond Identity published the results of a survey highlighting password protection habits, office password “guessing games” and…

Sixty-seven percent lack confidence in their ability to recover business-critical data, which is troubling given that the amount of data businesses manage has grown by more than 10x since 2016. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto The conclusions that Dell draws from its annual Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) for 2021 should serve as a warning to anyone in the data security community: Emerging technologies and ransomware are making it harder to secure data, and the problem is…

Getting the first 100 days right is critical to achieving momentum, credibility, and long-term success. By Etay Maor, Senior Director, Security Strategy, Cato Networks Starting off as a new CIO in a tough, dynamic environment can be daunting. CIOs must juggle multiple issues like coping with hybrid workplaces, changing cybersecurity and compliance protocols, increasing ransomware attacks and high expectations from the board, to name but a few. New CIOs need to tackle biased perceptions, make…

Only 31% are shipping laptops to employees and nearly half have spent their own money on a remote workspace, a survey from GetApp finds. Image: GetApp It’s pretty clear that hybrid work is here to stay, for the foreseeable future, anyway, and yet, only 31% of small businesses are shipping laptops to at least some employees, according to a new report.  The Tech at Work survey from GetApp, part of Gartner Digital Markets, also found…